Curators, crude oil and an outdated cultural mix

Tonight, the Tate Britain is holding a summer party in which it is also celebrating 20 years of BP sponsorship (Galleries and museums face summer of protest over BP arts sponsorship, 25 June). As crude oil continues to devastate coastlines and communities in the Gulf of Mexico, BP executives will be enjoying a cocktail reception with curators and artists at Tate Britain. These relationships enable big oil companies to mask the environmentally destructive nature of their activities with the social legitimacy that is associated with such high-profile cultural associations.

We represent a cross-section of people from the arts community that believe that the BP logo represents a stain on Tate's international reputation. Many artists are angry that Tate and other national cultural institutions continue to sidestep the issue of oil sponsorship. Little more than a decade ago, tobacco companies were seen as respectable partners for public institutions to gain support from – that is no longer the case. It is our hope that oil and gas will soon be seen in the same light. The public is rapidly coming to recognise that the sponsorship programmes of BP and Shell are means by which attention can be distracted from their impacts on human rights, the environment and the global climate.

Hans Haacke, artist

John Keane, artist

Caryl Churchill, playwright

Matthew Herbert, electronic artist and composer

Suzi Gablik, art critic and writer

Gordon Roddick, art philanthopist

Rebecca Solnit, writer and art critic

Lucy R. Lippard, writer and curator

Davey Anderson, playwright

Adam Chodzko, artist

Beverly Naidus, artist and professor

Suzanne Lacy, artist

Chris Jordan, artist

Cat Phillipps, artist

Martin Rowson, cartoonist

Robert Newman, comedian and writer

Sonia Boyce, artist

Barbara Steveni, artist and initiator of Artist Placement Group

Peter Fend, artist

SaiMuRai (Simon Murray), writer, poet, artist

Ackroyd & Harvey, artists

Aidan Jolly, musician, community artist

Jon Sack, artist

Matthew Lee Knowles, composer

Theodore Price, artist

Scott Massey, artist

Ben Mellor, writer, performer, educator

Gary Anderson, The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home, artist collective

• The letter above was amended on 29 June. One of the intended signatories, Suzanne Lacy, had been included twice in the list of signatories supplied to us, and another, Maya Ramsay, had been omitted from the list. This has been corrected.

• Recent catastrophic events in the Gulf of Mexico have brought to a head a situation that for many years has been uncomfortable, but tolerated. Now we find it necessary to stand up and deplore the Tate galleries' sponsorship by BP.

The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management's Arts and Environment Network (AEN) was formed in 2007 to put creativity at the heart of environmental policy and practice. Its members represent cultural institutions, universities and agencies entrusted to care for the environment.

As the world and indeed Tate have learned to flourish without support from slavery, tobacco and alcohol, we and they must learn to emerge from the culture of fossil fuels and the insidious oil industry. BP, Shell and all other petrochemical corporations must be denied control of our arts and cultural institutions, right now. As Tate is about to celebrate 10 years of funding from BP, we call on the trustees and director of Tate to put a halt to the tyranny of oil patronage and cleanse the oil stains from art. We also call on Jeremy Hunt, secretary of state for culture, media and sport, to use his powers as the responsible minister to ensure this happens.

• It is understandable that, as you report, many artists and green groups are protesting against arts institutions receiving sponsorship from BP – but it is important to describe what such corporate charitable donations are – and what they are not. They are not in any way ever a meaningful contributor in a company's overall obligations to its stakeholders. The amounts are collectively too small and the selection of recipients is far too random for the largesse to be anything than incidental in the context of a big company's finances.

While some companies might seek to suggest that donations to good causes are part of their commitment to "corporate social responsibility" the public is unlikely to be fooled – you cannot buy yourself a good reputation or build brand approval by making such gifts. In reality one of the main reasons that big companies donate to arts institutions is to buy their directors privileged access to events, such as to premium seats at the opera house. For the arts institution it is a harmless and valuable source of funds to pander to the vanities of a few corporate fat cats. No wonder they are rallying round BP at the moment.

Paddy Briggs

Teddington, Middlesex

• The concept of magnificence is as old as the fact of wealth and exploitation, and public arts without money from the swollen coffers of scurrilous industrialists would be a thin stranded thing. When individuals and institutions strive to launder their reputations with their grand donations it would be churlish to carp at the sight of a little sweat or blood or a few oil-soaked feathers, especially with our government preparing to withdraw so much of their seed from the local tiller men. How did we imagine such crude and dispensable profits were derived in the first place?

BP will thrive without the arts, but art gets smashed when the barbarians are banished from the citadel.

Julian Firth

London

• What's the difference between the reckless and irresponsible banking culture and reckless and irresponsible exploration by giant oil companies? If the government wants to regulate banks by splitting them up when they become to big or too profligate, why not apply the same principle to oil giants, media behemoths and defence goliaths which ride roughshod over the interests of the environment, societies and human rights? The real point is that western business management (and regulation) is not and never was all it was cracked up to be. A clever myth has been well watered by mainly MBAs as they spew out from business colleges, voraciously looking for companies to infect with their asset stripping takeover obsession. It's time to rethink the entire way we do business and manage firms for stakeholders instead of shareholders.